Lessons from the archives
I’m a bit of a pack rat when it comes to some things; I have convinced myself not to preserve, for example, printed results from most meets, but I do try to save my recordings from the mixed zone. My recorder does not come with Macintosh-compatible software, so I patiently play the recordings through 1/8″ audio cable into the microphone jack, re-recording them in Audacity and saving the files as MP3.
Some events produce dozens of short files, and the task is made more tedious by my distaste for listening to my own recorded voice. (“Who is that idiot asking the questions?”) Once I let go of the actual voices, however, I can listen to the rhythm of the meet and learn from the things which aren’t said.
For example, I’m clearing the 2008 Reebok Grand Prix now. I heard myself talking to Reese Hoffa while the crowd roared in the background; I could tell I was trying to show Hoffa that I was really interested in what he had to say, not what was happening on the track.
It’s also interesting to hear the tone of the interviews changing as the meet progresses. Early in a meet, the interviews are long and rambling, because nobody knows yet what the story of the meet will be, and the reporters want to cover all the bases just in case they wind up having to lead with the athlete standing in front of them. Later in the meet, we find one or two long press-conference type recordings which are The Story (can you say Usain Bolt?) and everything around them is brief and perfunctory. This becomes unfortunate when, for example, I dig back in the archives to find out what Linet Masai said after she beat Tirunesh Dibaba in 2009.
I hope this stuff turns out to be useful for someone someday, but right now its lessons for me are mostly secondary.